For running dietpi, is it best to not login as root when able?

General Discussion
1

Hello, I am just getting Dietpi up and running on an old laptop of mine (not dual booting) and I have a question regarding security.

My laptop is running Dietpi fine, and I plan to use this system for pi-hole (via docker) at first before expanding to some other things (like adding a VPN to access my home network from away) but I am wanting to start only with pi-hole and learn because I am a noob with linux.

As I was looking at r/linux4noobs, I noticed this comment on a post about security and antivirus and this user recommends not being logged in as root for most functions even if the distro allows it. I know from looking at other forum posts that Dietpi installs all programs via root.

This may be a stupid question, but I want to learn and make sure I don’t do something stupid for my home network: can I run programs on another sign in besides root and are there other security measures beyond a firewall and fail2ban for an internet facing system that I should be looking into?

2

We don’t install all programs as user root. It’s needed to setup the apps but most of them are running with their own local users. These are app individual users, not even able to login from a shell.

But why do you want to use Docker to run PiHole? Quite some overhead for such a small application. We offer a native installation option for PiHole, without Docker.

Regarding your thoughts about root user, Docker is running as root by default. And for a non experienced user, it might be tough to get Docker running without root.